Flaming Lips Prepare New Album

American psych-out oddballs The Flaming Lips are preparing to release a brand new double album, scheduled to emerge later this summer.

The Flaming Lips are one of America's foremost groups. The band have developed from shambling psychedelic weirdos to become assured songwriters. As a measure of their esteem Oklahoma recently voted 'Do You Realize?' as its state song, despite some concerted opposition from stick-in-the-mud politicians.

The band last released an album with 2006's 'At War With The Mystics' set. Since then The Flaming Lips have focussed on touring and completing their long awaited film 'Christmas On Mars'.

Filmed entirely in lead singer Wayne Coyne's back yard, the movie is perhaps their most ambitious effort to date. Released over the festival period, 'Christmas On Mars' is a bizarre yet heart-warming affair.

Now it seems that The Flaming Lips can look forward to their next album. Lead singer Wayne Coyne told Billboard recently that the decision to make the record a double album came after extended jam sessions.

"I think with this there was an element of accidentally stumbling upon more spontaneous sort of freak-out stuff," Coyne said.

"We were sitting at (drummer) Steven's house and we just started out having these freak-out jam sessions where he'd play drums and I'd play bass and we just would sort of do freaky stuff. Some of those recordings, even though they're not recorded very well, really had a spontaneity about them that we probably wouldn't have purposely done.”

The group have apparently already written thirteen songs for the album, with another eight or nine in the pipeline.

Flaming Lips could well unveil the new material during their summer shows. The band plan to let fans choose their set list for their performance at the Pitchfork Festival in New York, before jetting over to Scotland for RockNess.